> Microsoft called it stack ranking. This is hardly new and is fairly commonly done in many industries. The book name escapes me but the CEOs loved it about how

> Microsoft called it stack ranking. This is hardly new and is fairly commonly done in many industries. The book name escapes me but the CEOs loved it about how it touted this very thing to do. Is it the 'right thing', no. Jack Welch, who "Action" Jack Barker in Silicon Valley is loosely modeled on. Jack received a $417M severance package on his exit from GE, based on improving revenues from $26B in the 80s to $130B in 2000. However, there was a lot of criticism that this was very flimsy, as the market cap of GE was shrunk 60% in the decade following, with decisions made during his tenure widely believed to have played a part (huge disputes with New York and the EPA about PCBs being dumped into the Hudson River and other pollution). And "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, who was touted as a "professional turnaround specialist and downsizer". However, later in his career, it was found that most of his turnaround success stories were actually massive accounting fraud to misrepresent the true state of those companies (leading Sunbeam into bankruptcy). Notoriously, too, Al freely admitted that he had many of the traits of a psychopath, but stated his belief was that he viewed many of them as being positives and essential for executive success.